How to Use Automation to Knock A Star Off Your Review

Auto­mat­ed mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems have done a ton for our indus­try. From speed­ing up response times to dras­ti­cal­ly decreas­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion work­load, these sys­tems can increase prof­its and make life as a small busi­ness own­er sig­nif­i­cant­ly easier. 

How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to note that these sys­tems take exten­sive thought about your cus­tomer expe­ri­ence; effort in repli­cat­ing it; and con­sis­tent test­ing, learn­ing, and course cor­rect­ing to main­tain a 5‑star cus­tomer experience. 

In our last blog, David dis­cussed his cus­tomer expe­ri­ence when an automa­tion cam­paign start­ed strong but even­tu­al­ly fell flat and caused him to seek out a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny for ser­vices. This month, I expe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar fail­ure: A busi­ness suc­cess­ful­ly using tech­nol­o­gy and a human touch to build trust and then los­ing that trust when they become over­ly reliant on automation. 

Since the mar­riage of automa­tion and human touch is such a nuanced top­ic, I thought this was an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to dive in and dis­cuss what went right, what went wrong, and the lessons I learned from being the customer.

Trust Earned

Recent­ly, we decid­ed to ship one of our vehi­cles when mov­ing across the coun­try. I used a trust­ed arti­cle source to iden­ti­fy some of the top providers. I vis­it­ed each web­site, read reviews, and got online quotes to nar­row it down. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the fac­tor that pushed most com­pa­nies out of my search was online forms that didn’t work. Les­son #1: Make sure your online forms work.

Since I was new to the process, I decid­ed to make a few calls to the final­ists to learn more. The first per­son I spoke to was delight­ful. She was knowl­edge­able, walked me through the entire process, and was patient with all my ques­tions. She was such a pro that I decid­ed to go with them imme­di­ate­ly. She assigned me a sales rep, sent me the need­ed forms, and we were off to the races. Les­son #2: Well-trained, tal­ent­ed human sales­peo­ple can accom­plish a lot in a sin­gle phone call. 

Trust Test­ed

Before I had a chance to com­plete the paper­work, pack­ing the mov­ing truck became the focus of my sched­ule. Since I was leav­ing the car with a friend until it could be picked up, it wasn’t a prob­lem for me to put it on the back burn­er for 24 hours. Clear­ly, they did not agree. That first day, I got com­plete­ly bom­bard­ed by robo-emails and calls. ​“Hur­ry,” ​“urgent,” and ​“notice of cancellation.” 

I don’t know if the mes­sages sig­naled fake, auto­mat­ed urgency, or if the tim­ing was just bad, but I ignored all of the touch points and became increas­ing­ly irri­tat­ed by the company.

Final­ly, despite hav­ing received mul­ti­ple auto­mat­ed texts and emails, I had already emailed the rep they assigned me with some addi­tion­al ques­tions and received no response. 

Les­son #3: As you auto­mate more and more com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it’s worth real­ly look­ing into how it affects the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Some­thing you build to increase com­mu­ni­ca­tion effi­cien­cy and trust can inad­ver­tent­ly erode it. 

It turns out those emails and calls were actu­al­ly urgent because they had found a car­ri­er for my car. All those calls and emails were designed to ensure speedy com­mu­ni­ca­tion between me and the dri­ver. So why did they actu­al­ly entice me to stop com­mu­ni­cat­ing? I spent a fair amount of time pon­der­ing this question. 

First, the emails were over­ly designed and used a ton of hyper­bol­ic lan­guage. It sig­naled to me ​“man­u­fac­tured urgency.” 

Sec­ond, a flood of auto­mat­ed con­tent com­bined with a com­plete fail­ure of human response to one of my ques­tions obvi­ous­ly did­n’t sit well with me. I could­n’t help but ask myself, is this a com­pa­ny I can real­ly trust?

Trust Regained — But Not 100%

Once I got my feet under me, I called them. Once again, I spoke to a bril­liant human who explained every­thing and told me they want­ed me to be com­plete­ly com­fort­able with this expe­ri­ence mov­ing forward.

I’m giv­ing them anoth­er chance, so it wasn’t a total loss. But assum­ing this goes well, I will still knock off a star in my review. This is not meant as a pun­ish­ment. It’s meant to alert oth­er cus­tomers about how this process works from a cus­tomer’s per­spec­tive. In my opin­ion, there are flaws in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion process I wish I would have been aware of. 

So as you cre­ate or review your mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer ser­vice automa­tion, take some time to con­sid­er the blind spots that erode trust or ban­ish it com­plete­ly, and don’t for­get — humans are still essential. 

Need help?

Feel­ing over­whelmed? At DC Mar­ket­ing Group, we spe­cial­ize in mar­ket­ing for painters. Our vast expe­ri­ence and insights can stream­line your mar­ket­ing process­es and get your automa­tions up to snuff. Sched­ule Your Free Con­sul­ta­tion Call today!